The current proposal outlines a clinical outcome study which is concerned with the relationship between imaginative absorption, hypnotic suggestibility, and responsivity to systematic desensitization. Although imagery has been posited as a mediating factor in the extinction of anxiety during desensitization, experimental efforts have been unable to establish a relationship between vividness of imagery (as measured by self-reports) and successful desensitization outcome. This raises questions about a counterconditioning (extinction) explanation regarding how desensitization works. The literature on hypnosis, which has also been concerned with predictors of success, has moved beyond vividness of imagery per se toward more active, dynamic aspects of cognitive imaginative abilities. Measures such as absorption and involved imagining consistently yield positive results when it comes to predicting hypnotizability. Inasmuch as striking parallels have been drawn between hypnosis and behavior therapy treatments such as desensitization, measures that are either predictive or reflective of hypnotizability might predict successful desensitization for those subjects who score high on them better than vividness of imagery. Subjects, after being dichotomized into high and low groups on the basis of their absorption and hynotizability scores, will be randomly assigned to desensitization, attention-placebo and waiting list groups. It is predicted that those who score high on absorption and suggestibility will exceed their counterparts in both the desensitization and attention-placebo conditions. College students and community members with public speaking anxiety will constitute the sample of the study.